Mark Shtanov invites readers of The Polyphony to the exhibition Respectful Disposal, taking place at Saan1 Gallery in Manchester on 25–26 July.
Parts of donated human bodies are imported into the United Kingdom from the United States for surgical training, biomedical equipment testing and pharmaceutical manufacturing. When these specimens are no longer needed, some organisations repatriate them back to the United States. Others send them to high temperature waste incinerators, where the Human Tissue Authority permits their destruction provided it is done ‘with respect’ and ‘separately from other clinical waste’ (Human Tissue Authority 2023). What respect looks like at an industrial facility designed to destroy things as efficiently as possible is the subject of my doctoral research at the University of Manchester – and of a forthcoming exhibition in Manchester this July.
Over four years, I visited waste incinerators across England, interviewed anatomists and regulators, and held participatory workshops with incinerator workers (Shtanov 2025; 2026). Through architectural drawings, I documented the spatial and material practices of what the waste industry calls ‘respectful disposal’: drums carefully placed into lifts, access hatches dismantled so workers can load specimens by hand, and occasionally, religious ministers invited to give last rites to anatomical waste. The workers’ responses were striking. Anatomical waste makes up less than 1% of what these facilities process, yet it causes disproportionate distress. ‘Mortuary work is not what we signed up for,’ one worker told me. When I ran similar workshops with death specialists – lawyers, designers, scholars – their reaction was different. ‘This is re-humanising the de-humanised,’ one remarked. Another described the situation as ‘something from the Simpsons.’ Where waste workers wanted to know less about what they were incinerating, death specialists wanted to acknowledge more.
These contrasting professional perspectives reveal a system designed so that no single person holds the full picture. The exhibition Respectful Disposal, taking place at Saan1 Gallery in Manchester on 25–26 July, presents this research to a wider public for the first time. Across three floors, visitors follow the journey of a donated body from the United States to a British waste incinerator through large-format drawings and physical objects, including an anatomical waste container. On the top floor, after seeing what workers and specialists think, visitors are invited to leave their own responses: written, spoken or drawn. These responses will inform policy recommendations that I am developing for the Human Tissue Authority and the Ministry of Justice, the two bodies whose overlapping jurisdictions currently leave this practice ambiguously regulated.
The exhibition asks a question that my research alone cannot answer: what does the public think should happen when human remains fall through legislative gaps and become waste? The practices I have documented sit at the overlooked intersection of biomedicine and waste infrastructure – a space where the moral status of the dead body is quietly renegotiated through industrial routines. Opening this conversation beyond the specialist groups who currently manage it would be as important as the research findings themselves.
Respectful Disposal runs on 25–26 July 2026, midday–5pm, at Saan1 Gallery, 5 Kelvin Street, Manchester M4 1ET.
Admission is free.
About the author
Mark Shtanov is a researcher completing his PhD at the University of Manchester in early 2026. Mark’s PhD uses drawings to examine the disposal of anatomical specimens at British waste incinerators. The project demonstrates the importance of waste labour and infrastructure for the global economies of human tissue and healthcare.
References
Human Tissue Authority (2023). Code C. Anatomical Examination. Code of Practice and Standards, Human Tissue Authority.
Shtanov, M. (2025). “Respectful Disposal: Spatial and Material Practices of Incinerating Necro-Waste.” Social Epistemology: 1-20.
Shtanov, M. (2026). “Decouplement: Commodity Geography of the Corpse.” Antipode 58 (3): e70166.
